There are many pontoon boats at the docks and in the water in the lakes of the United States and other countries. Unfortunately, each pontoon that is left in the water accumulates unwanted material at the water/pontoon interface. The accumulations may be dirt, algae, slime, seaweed, shellfish, or other unwanted materials. In any event, accumulations of material on pontoons have the well-known effect of reducing the pontoon's efficiency to move through the water. Thus, more power, and hence, more fuel, is required to maintain a given speed. The well-known solution, of course, is to remove the accumulations frequently to maintain a clean, efficient pontoon.
In many instances it is necessary to frequently clean each pontoon to maintain an efficient boat. It is not uncommon to clean each pontoon on a weekly basis as a routine matter. Such routine maintenance amounts to a lot of work and any improvement which reduces the effort involved in cleaning pontoon hulls would be greatly appreciated by those cleaning pontoon hulls. Even a small improvement in efficiency of each cleaning effort would yield large total dividends because of the frequency of cleaning events required by routine maintenance.
There have been efforts to provide machines for cleaning boat hulls but machines can be expensive and require power for their use. There also have been efforts to provide hand tools which require only human power and which can be manipulated for cleaning boat hulls. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 693,242 Feb. 11, 1902 to Culpepper for APPARATUS FOR CLEANING BOTTOMS OF SHIPS, discloses an apparatus using brushes which are forcibly thrust against a ships bottom by the reactionary effect of a stream of water issuing from a nozzle which projects at right angles to the plane of the brush arms. U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,821 Jul. 24, 2001 to Hodder for CLEANING MEANS, discloses a boat hull cleaner having a telescoping handle with a buoyancy control means and a scrubbing brush. U.S. Pat. No. 4,102,290 Jul. 25, 1978, to Weiss for UNDERWATER BOTTOM CLEANING SYSTEM AND APPARATUS, discloses a system and apparatus for cleaning submerged portions of hulls with a cyclically movable brush having a motor driven by air or other gas. The Weiss apparatus has means having variable buoyancy to lift and lower the cleaning means of brush assembly into and out of varying cleaning relation with respect to the hull. U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,068 to Lester at al. for PORTABLE SCRUBBING TOOL discloses a pneumatic powered portable scrubbing tool having a scrubbing brush member that is rotated by an air powered motor.
While there has been interest in developing machines and tools for cleaning boat hulls, there remains a need for improvements with respect to tools for cleaning pontoons. Some tools would be too expensive for an average small boat owner. Other tools would be too difficult for one person to effectively manipulate. Thus, it would be desirable to have an economical, practical, easy to manipulate tool for cleaning pontoons of pontoon boats and the like. Accordingly the present invention provides a tool especially designed and particularly well adapted for cleaning the pontoons of a pontoon boat.
Further understanding of the present invention will be had from the following specification and claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.